If you came of age during the video porn boom of the 80s, I dont need to explain who Nina Hartley is and not just if youre a guy, either. Since she was openly bisexual and not just performing her girl-on-girl scenes for the cash, she had a far greater female following than most porn stars. But for those of you who werent pleasuring yourselves to her work, Nina Hartley was one of the biggest actresses in X-rated film throughout the 1980s, appearing in over 400 porno pictures, beginning with Educating Nina in 1984. Unlike most porn actresses, Nina didnt spend a couple years in the industry only to vanish off the face of the Earth. She stuck with it and these days puts out a series of How To videos covering subjects as diverse as how to organize the perfect orgy and how to take it up the bum.

I spent many a lonely night with Nina Hartleys videos in my 20s. But thats not why I wanted to interview her. My interest in her was piqued when a friend lent me her book Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex and pointed out that on page one she mentions she was raised in a Zen Buddhist monastery. How many porn stars can you talk Zen with? I had to meet her

Nina Hartley: So you write about Zen and punk rock? I never was that angry; I vaguely understood punks significance, but I never got it. Thats something thats certainly hamstrung me in the past.

Brad Warner: That youre not angry enough?

NH: That Im not in touch with all of my emotions. Whereas the thing about Buddhism is that to feel any of your emotions you have to feel all of them. You cant feel just the good ones.

BW: So you were raised by Zen Buddhist parents?

NH: Yeah. My parents live in a Zen temple in San Francisco.

BW: Im curious as to how that affected your career choice.

NH: The Zen background didnt affect my career choice at all. When I was 10 they discovered Zazen. When I was 13 my mom retired from her job and they became full-time Zen students. My initial conditioning had already taken root; I had issues with codependence and having narcissistic parents who were very wrapped up in their own suffering. What I love about my parents is that they had no bad intentions.

BW: Thats good.

NH: But suffering makes you very short sighted and inner focused. Throughout the 60s theyd been doing other kinds of therapy marriage counseling, biofeedback, body energetics. They got into mescaline, tai chi, naked tai chi Then they discovered Zen because what they really wanted was to live a devotional life. Theres no Jewish or Protestant monasteries so theres no place to retreat and study God.

BW: So this was part of your upbringing?

NH: Oh sure. In fact, I got to meet Suzuki Roshi a couple of times before he died so Ive been around it for 40 years. But my career choice comes from the fact that Im queer. After 25 years in the business, Ive realized Im a small a artist and sexuality is my subject matter. My parents offered the idea of finding your own way [and] living an authentic life. If I wasnt so exhibitionistic or if I wasnt deemed pretty enough to be paid to take my clothes of on camera, Id have been a nurse and been freaky on weekends. As things transpired, I am both considered attractive enough and Im exhibitionistic enough to like cameras.

BW: Thats fortunate.

NH: But I have a message about sex. The Dalai Lama said theres no greater wisdom than compassion. So I realize in my life that kindness is a choice you make.

BW: What do you mean by that?

NH: I take compassionate awareness and acceptance as far as I can take it without being an actual temple living, Zazen-sitting, observant Buddhist. But it is a primary philosophy that I grew up with. Zen, in terms of my daily life, in terms of compassion, infuses all of my work especially my interaction with my fans because a lot of people look at people who consume pornography as losers, wankers, just completely pathetic.

BW: We are!

NH: [Laughs] I dont see it that way. There are certainly many people in that world who could be considered pathetic losers but liking porn does not make you such a person. As a stripper I realized that men and women are equally fucked over about sex, but in such different areas were blind to the others pain. For certain kinds of guys, women are heartless bitches and cock teases and will bleed you dry before giving you a kiss. And for some women, men are asshole jerks and want one thing. Really, its the culture keeping them equally ignorant and then saying, Go off and get married! Watching the men, just showing them my vulva, I realized how sad it was. No woman in their life had ever said, Here it is, heres what I like, heres what you can do with it, try it this way. Poor guys are supposed to know what to do.

BW: Thats true.

NH: And were supposed to not know what to do until he awakens us with his kiss, touch

BW: Whatever, yeah

NH: My early attempts at communicating my needs were quite clumsy and resulted in the guy running from the room. I must have sounded like a drill sergeant, OK, to the left!! [Laughs] And porn, because you have to act a little bit, Ooh, ooh, more to the left. Oh yeah, right there, oh yeah. So talking dirty is just saying what you need using the vernacular.

BW: I appreciate that kind of thing.

NH: Guys want to be good with a woman because its good for their ego and also because then shell have him back! Theyre just clueless because our culture does not give us any good messages about sex. I love that about porn, besides the fact its where the naked women were because its hard to get naked chicks to go home with you.

BW: Yeah. I know about that too.

NH: I didnt know how to get with chicks either. Its hard. I wanted to be straight up. I was like a gay man, So you wanna go home and have some fun? Back! Then I tried saying, Oh baby, baby, I love you, I love you. And later on theyre like, You lied to me! Well, I tried to tell you the truth and you slapped me.

BW: My friend Teddy says there are two genders: crazy and stupid.

NH: I love that. For me, sex has been my practice. I try to be as honest as possible, as present as possible, as centered as possible, as kind as possible, as generous as possible. I meet them on the set. Its like, Hey were working together later. I have ten seconds from touching them for their body, for their hindbrain, to know its going to be OK. Adult entertainment stripped away everything that was difficult for me. Intimacy was difficult. But I dont want to have sex meeting strangers in a bar and going home with them drunk. I dont like having sex when Im drunk. I dont like having sex with people who are drunk, or high. Or desperately lonely. Or searching for the Are you it?! Are you it?! Are you it?! Are you gonna be The One?

BW: Thats just miserable.

NH: The majority of people who watch porn are un-partnered. Id say, completely unscientifically, 35 % of the porn market is never going to be partnered. It takes a certain skill set to be partnered. You have the biological knowledge of the machine. What are the parts, what do they do? Then there is your intellectual understanding about sex, what you believe about sex, what you were taught about sex. Then theres your intra-personal skill.

BW: Intra-personal?

NH: Your relationship with yourself. These are skills that develop at completely different times. My father says there are feelings and then there are thoughts about feelings; our family had thoughts and theories and concepts about feelings. But feelings? Huh, fascinating. Like Mr. Spock. But your body cannot lie. It contains everything that ever happened to you. All of these feelings are here. And if you can learn to sit still and stay with them. Dont run, dont flee, dont fall asleep, dont eat. Just stay, stay, stay. Eventually all will be revealed. If you can just stay with it.

BW: Well I agree with that, of course!

NH: Sex works that way for me because Im queer enough that I had to get settled with sex or I was never gonna be settled with anything else in life. If I was more conventionally sexed, I wouldnt have had to put so much work into it because I would have been normal. I wouldnt have had to delve deeply into it.

BW: Sometimes I wonder if anybodys ever really normal though.

NH: OK. For lack of a better word, a heterosexually oriented monogamous person, which is as close to normal as were going to get. But my orientation is multiple. I liked sex work because when you stay in the body, your truth shows up. Where are you scared? Where are you blocked? I got to my emotions through the body. I have a girlfriend who is very monogamous. I asked her a few years back, How do you do that? Ive never had a monogamous thought in my life. She said, Well, when Im in love I dont want anybody else. How does that work? Fascinating! Because for me, being in love and wanting you are, experientially, completely different things. Theres my love for my husband; I love him and I want him all the time and I never get enough. But youre someone different. I have people who are straight all the time ask me, Doesnt it get confusing? Arent you afraid that if you let him sleep with other people hes going to fall in love?

BW: I would be, to be honest.

NH: I never grew up with a Midwestern indoctrination; I grew up in a climate of anything goes, find your own way. You know, peace, love and flip-flops. I never had any guilt or shame about being a bisexual exhibitionistic person. I never ever felt shame about who I was sexually. Which is why I can be in this business 25 years and still be sober. The worst thing that religion does is instill shame and guilt about sex and the body.

BW: I completely agree with that. But in terms of polyamory, I come from the completely opposite direction. Im more like your friend, the heterosexual monogamous one.

NH: It is my Buddha Nature to be omni-sexual. If you pluck one string on a well-tuned guitar the one next to it will vibrate because its the nature of sound waves. Well, my husband picks a certain chord. Then you, you hit this string and you over there, this string. You cant hit her string. Your frequency is completely different. Its not confusing to me. You cant pluck my husbands string and he cant pluck yours.

BW: I can understand what youre saying but Im just not like that at all.

NH: Which is fine. People say, Oh Nina, I could never be like you. I dont even know what like me means to them. But everyone can be like me -- meaning, finding your truth and living it. Your truth wont look like mine. Your truth is going to be monogamous and heterosexual because thats true for you. In that way youre like me. My husband and I have a D/s relationship. That was a new kind of sex for me. I didnt know anything about bondage or sadomasochism. Id never done actual, official power exchange. But its his sexuality. He doesnt have any vanilla. His sexual orientation is kink. I really loved him; I wanted him so I had to learn his language. So anybody can be like me, which is getting rid of guilt and shame about sex and your desires. You can have whatever desires you want once you stop repressing, being stressed over and suppressing and all the things we do when we dont want to face the truth of our desires. They are what they are. With my other belief systems in place, are there any parts of these desires I can actually express? I know one person who would love to be a swinger and he loves his wife very much and shes not a swinger. So theyre not swingers.

BW: He had to make a choice then?

NH: You have to make a choice. But its easier to make a choice when youre not fleeing from shame, fear and guilt. I believe that what gets you off is what gets you off. Thats biological. On top of that is the cultural condemnation of what it is. Youre not supposed to want someone of your own gender, youre not supposed to want someone out of your marriage, not supposed to want someone before marriage. We spend all this time going, Whats wrong with me? Oh my God! I beat myself up for years because I wasnt multi-orgasmic. I read in a book women are multi-orgasmic and for years and years I tried. I did all the masturbation workshops and all of that and I discovered that I am not a multi-orgasmic woman. Once I realized that, a big load was taken off. Quite frankly, I only need to come a few times a month.

BW: That means in some of those videos I was renting of yours in the 80s you werent actually

NH: Shhhhhhh. Im not lying to people. The way I come on camera is the way I come at home. More importantly, I dont do on camera what I wouldnt do at home for free anyway. There are no royalties or residuals. If you dont like what youre doing, the works gonna suck. When your body is your job, when sex is your job, you really cannot let work suck.

BW: Unless your work is sucking!

NH: Thats different!

BW: Is there a union?

NH: No. And for lots of reasons there never will be a union. Thirty-five years ago we tried to join SAG. That was just shot out of the water. Its been illegitimate entertainment ever since.

BW: What about forming PAG, the Porn Actors Guild?

NH: It sounds great. But its a very transient population of rebellious young people who have no notion of solidarity. Theyre usually out in two years. Without institutional memory theres no way to build a union. Most women, when they quit the business, they go, they leave.

BW: Getting back to the Zen thing, its a little weird being here talking to you today because tomorrow Im going to go lead a three-day Zen retreat.

NH: I love it!

BW: Its my freaky dual life.

NH: But for me its not freaky dual. Its very compatible. Im glad that youre here.

BW: When I first started writing for SuicideGirls that became a really big issue among certain factions of the Buddhist community.

NH: Did those guys want you out of the sangha?

BW: Yeah. One guy actually tried to get me booted out.

NH: Where is the compassion in that? You need to do a sesshinon that! A seven-day one. A one-day sittings not enough.

BW: The whole matter of sex and religion is fascinating stuff.

NH: We got married at Zen Center and Sojun Mel Weitsman, the head of the Berkeley Zen Center, married us.

BW: Oh, I know Mel.

NH: He was the first person who ever showed me compassion. At the time my parents were very pre-occupied with other stuff. Their marriage was in crisis, they had three other kids. I was young; they didnt want to leave me all alone. By 12 I was interested in girls and boys. This being Berkley, I understood there was a word for that Bisexual. The books at the time, 1971, said [adopts exaggerated scholarly voice], Homosexual experimentation in adolescence is a normal part of growing up. But at 14 I realized this wasnt going away. I was a bisexual person. Mel was the first person who ever looked me in the eye. He was very direct, very there, relaxed, open, not expecting, not judging. I recognized it as something Id never had before, something I wanted more of, but something I could barely stand. For 37 years I have been circling that moment, really trying to become centered in it.

BW: Thats really interesting.

NH: For me, sex work has done that because I have to do that for other people. I can be centered because Ive accepted all this about myself so I can be solid while theyre freaking out. Some of them clam down, but some of them flee because its just too much. When you see the truth or you see acceptance, it can either be a drink of water in the desert or a flash of fire that scalds you because of where you are in your development. Can you accept compassion or can you not? Mel was the first one to offer it to me. Ten seconds max. That was all I could take. Im sure I blinked first. I had to have. Weve never really spoken about it.

BW: When I started writing for SuicideGirls I knew people were going to throw the whole objectification of women and stuff at me.

NH: When I was a dancer, I realized right away the fundamental flaw in the objectification argument. Human females are ready to mate all the time. Most animals are receptive for about two weeks out of the year and thats it. Humans are unusual creatures. So if I come up and talk to you because you look interesting, am I objectifying you? No. Thats how I make my choice. Most animal species, the males strut and the females choose. Why do some birds have big tails? Because chicks dig it. The feminists completely denounce the concept of female sexual agency, female self-awareness, female choice.

BW: Was 70s feminism anti-porn?

NH: Actually the initial 70s feminism was very pro-porn. They were very pro-decriminalization of prostitution. The NOW conference of 1973 has an amazing poster by Betty Dodson of a nude woman sitting in lotus position with one hand on her vulva. That was when they were working for sex workers rights. Back when the mainstream feminist movement thought women could think for themselves. In the porn wars of the mid-80s created the current split in feminism between the pro and anti censorship forces. Im a sex positive feminist. The so-called Left in this country has been completely hijacked by the anti-sex fanatics. There was a group trying to stop the war in Iraq. Larry Flynt offered them 30 thousand dollars and they took it. Then the anti-sex folks got so loud they ended up giving it back. That organization is, of course, now defunct.

BW: Thats brilliant

NH: These women question a womans ability not right a womans ability to do informed sex work of any kind. For them, dirty pictures is such an over-riding issue that the feminist left is completely silent on anything to do with womens sexual freedom because women are such victims and men are such pigs. This group of people think that women are oppressed as a class. Women are a gender, not a class. Its insulting. Sex workers have been willing to talk to people for 35 years. I used to go to NOW conferences and thered be a dozen sex workers of different kinds and they regarded like we were goblins or trolls or hobbits. Wed be saying, As a woman, here is my experience in pornography and they didnt want to know. If you say, Dirty pictures skeeve me out and bug me, then we can have a conversation. On most other issues we agree, Im against the war in Iraq, Id like to see national health care, etc. But I see men as human, I see men as equally victimized by the system. Men are also victims of the patriarchy. The anti-porn feminists are all about The Patriarchy. Its like they think they get together every Tuesday to talk about how they can use porn to keep women down.

BW: Oh! They know about us!

NH: [Laughs] Every country has its patriarchy. Its the same 200 families whove run the country forever. So youre no more a member of the patriarchy than I am. Most people do jobs they dont like. Most people work too hard for not enough money. Most people are humiliated in their day-to-day work by their horrible bosses and, quite frankly, men have it worse than women.

BW: We do?

NH: Yes, because at least women have the comfort of having girlfriends. I can come to a girlfriend and unload my feelings and get some support and some fucking compassion. You, if youre lucky, might have a partner you can talk to about things. But the average guy cant go to his guy friends and say, Im hurt, Im scared, Im nervous, Im worried, frightened. You can be angry, pissed off

BW: Youre right. But the repression of sex is a very old thing. There may be legitimate reasons for that. You dont want unwanted children, diseases, conflicts that jealousy ignites, so you try to regulate that area of human interaction in a way that society can exist. You need agreed upon rules. As a society develops, you can put aside some of the rules that really werent working anymore and throughout history thats been happening gradually. I think our society is pretty advanced as far as sexuality. When I lived in Japan I was amazed that their sexuality doesnt have any concept of sin.

NH: Right!

BW: But there are still rules. I think you can only push things so far. What I see in a lot of pro-sex stuff is that sometimes youre trying to push it faster than society is ready to go.

NH: Its true! For sure! Of course there have to be rules about sexual behavior and expression. You have to have consent. Thats good. But what the West does is take up the Greek notion of the body being base and the spirit being pure and the monotheistic religions were built on that.

BW: Buddhism doesnt have that particular notion.

NH: Right. Im not like most Americans because I wasnt raised with that notion of sex as sinful. Its something I read in a book. What I dont like is artificial limits. Like, you can only be married to one person at a time. You may only have sex with one person at a time. Which, if youre monogamous, is fine. But what about the rest of us who might be other?

BW: I think the problem is when you try to make a blanket rule for everybody.

NH: And this country does. Frankly Id like to see less sex in advertising and more freedom in private. The idea that what you do over there harms me over here, I find very disturbing. How is my happy marriage the way we have with our sexuality hurting your traditional marriage? How does the existence of gay marriage harm your traditional marriage? It doesnt make any sense. Of course gays should marry; they should be as unhappy as the rest of us, as one comedian put it. A good marriage takes work. This is what I dont get about certain feminists. Actions hurt people. Thoughts dont harm people. Whatever youre thinking about me right now doesnt harm me.

BW: No, it doesnt.

NH: If I quit the business tomorrow and crawled over a football field of broken glass to kiss the foot of one of these anti-porn feminists, they might use me in one of their campaigns but Id never be redeemed in their eyes. They have no compassion. Theyre like Pol Pot or Stalin. Im no fan of Andrea Dworkin, although I think she sometimes made some good points and address things that needed to be addressed. But its not right for a lesbian to be telling heterosexual women how they should approach sex. If youre a heterosexual woman you need a man. Sixty-percent of women want to be married and have kids. Im too bisexual to have been lesbian. I like men. I like fucking men. I like most things about men. Theyre cool. I never could buy what she said. Early feminists went to Arabia and said how nice the burkha was cause it took off the pressure of the male gaze. For them, male desire was also desire to harm. Youre conquesting us, penetrating us, conquering us! I thought we were having fun. It goes both ways. I like it. You like it. I objectify women and I look at them and I desire them without having any desire to harm so I knew from my own experience that I could objectify and not wish to harm.

BW: You have a bit of a male perspective, I suppose.

NH: I do! Im not just bisexual. Im very inter-gendered. I like being a girl. Yet I love women the way men love women. And I take pride in my ability to be a satisfying and a good lover to women. Besides, I liked having people look at me naked, even if they were guys. Guys are fun! And I found out that the more nudity there is, the better-behaved men are. Absent beer.

BW: Absent beer, yeah. Im not a drinker myself.

NH: Its like, if you do this, the naked tits will stay. OK. I can do that! Men are very rule oriented. What are the rules for naked boobs being in the room? Ill follow those rules. Let me know what they are and dont change in the middle. Women do that sometimes. That can be very annoying. I realized that part of my power over men is in not hating him for wanting to look. Hes a straight guy; of course he wants to look at naked women! Duh! So instead of shaming him and taking his money, I was like [smiles], Hey look! I like to show off. According to some feminists, Im reducing myself to a masturbatory object.

BW: I wish I could be a masturbatory object.

NH: Im actually helping you with your next girlfriend. Im showing you, heres what works for me, try it on her. Men are hungry for information from an actual female wholl actually say something to them about it. I had instant compassion for them right away as equal human beings, equally beaten down by the patriarchy and equally lost and wandering. Men are shit out of luck if they need comfort or compassion or care. That just pisses me off. Im always very physical with my fans. I hug them. I touch them. I squeeze their shoulders. I have to let them know that I really do mean it.